Financial FAQs

“The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining. [State of the Union Address January 11 1962]” President John F Kennedy

President Kennedy’s maxim at his 1962 State of the Union address—the almost universal truth that the time to ‘repair’ our economy is when times are good—may seem dated today. At one time it was possible to repair it for everyone

But not today with record federal debt fueled by a succession of economic blows—sequential tax cuts that didn’t pay for themselves, recessions, the COVID-19 pandemic, high tariffs, and several wars over the past decades.

And foreign investors are fleeing U.S. government bond markets that literally finance one-quarter of our federal debt because of it, driving up interest rates. So much so that our ballooning federal debt is fast crowding out other government spending; even endangering social security benefits in about 10 years.

Now is one such time to repair our economic ‘roof’ because we have soaring financial markets and 3% annual GDP growth rates that have powered economic growth of late that could pay down the soaring federal debt that have backed up to World War II levels as a percentage of our Gross Domestic Product.

Alas, there is no agreement on how to repair our debt problem. This is while another war is creating a 1970’s-style stagflation that will add $trillions more to the deficit. International Energy Agency (IEA) officials, such as Fatih Birol, say the current Iran crisis is more severe than the oil shocks of 1973 and 1979, and the 2022 Ukraine-war shock, combined.

And businesses are not hiring new workers because of the economic uncertainty. It is fostering what has been called “The Great Hesitation” by the Wall Street Journal.

The WSJ cited the Baker, Bloom and Davis Economic Policy Uncertainty Index, a widely watched measure of policy-related uncertainty, that has surged to levels “typically seen during situations like the 2008 financial crisis (i.e., Great Recession) and the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic.”

Republicans aren’t showing much concern about the expanded deficit on their watch. Firstly, the highest tariff taxes since 1930 at the onset of the Great Depression has sharply raised every day prices. And the Trump administration’s immigrant shutdown is depriving the U.S. economy of enough new workers to replenish our labor force.

This is in part because Trump and the Republican Party have been unable to rein in the blatant racism of its Christian Nationalists’ policy that has branded almost all immigrant as undesirables. It has brought immigration to a trickle that once averaged one million entrants per year.

Yet immigrants have literally been the life blood of our economy and seed of economic growth. Stanford Business School studies have shown that immigrants represent nearly a quarter of the U.S. workforce in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics and more than a quarter of the nation’s Nobel Prize winners.

President Clinton was able to create actual budget surpluses in his last four years—from 1996-2000—by reaching agreement with congress on limiting military spending as well, until GW Bush busted the federal budget once again with Republican tax cuts while borrowing $trillions more to fight his wars on terror after the 9/11 attack.

It was a time when political parties knew how to compromise. How naïve President Kennedy sounds today when he said in 1962, “Members of the Congress, the Constitution makes us not rivals for power but partners for progress. We are all trustees for the American people, custodians of the American heritage.”

We need to repair more than the roof to survive as a democracy. But it means we first must realize we live under the same roof

Harlan Green © 2026

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen